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# London Grip New Poetry – Summer 2012

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This issue of London Grip features new poems by:

*Sally Long *Kerrin P. Sharpe *Pippa Little *Maria Taylor *Tamar Yoseloff *Fiona Moore
*Amado Storni *Bruce Christianson *Emma Lee *Alan Dunnett *David Cooke
*Brian Docherty *George Jardine *F.M. Brown *Roy Marshall *Andrew Shields
*Angela Kirby *Anna Mioduchowska *Phil Kirby *Robert Etty *Chris Jackson
*Thomas Ovans

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG new poetry Summer 2012

Editor’s Introduction

Birds swoop, flutter and perch among the poems in London Grip’s summer selection. Some are dark and ominous as the crows in Van Gogh’s fatal cornfield; but there are also colourful parakeets and a loquacious goldfinch.

Once we start to look, we can see how different kinds of birds relate to the emotions that poetry explores. Soaring eagles stir admiration and wonder; yet a carrion-eating vulture at close quarters arouses disgust. A dawn chorus can bring hope ; a nightingale’s song offers a sense of calm and peace. Brightly-coloured natural mimics like mynahs or macaws provoke delight and laughter. Even the most innocent of small birds can give a small pang of fear by bursting from a hedgerow as we enjoy a country walk. And, like uncontrolled emotions, birds can cause full-blown panic if they stray indoors and beat confined, domestic space with urgent wings.

Several of the poems in this issue of LG New Poetry could be classed as visiting migrants. We have contributions from poets originating from or based in Canada, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the USA. Our first foreign-language poem is by the Spanish poet Amado Storni; and it appears alongside a specially-composed English version. Readers might like to respond to this – or to any other feature of London Grip poetry – by using a comment facility which follows the last poem in this posting.

I am grateful to all contributors for sending me so much enjoyable and challenging work. And I am grateful too for the interesting email discussions that sometimes follow from my comments or suggestions about some aspect of a poem. On a more personal note, I’d also like to take this opportunity of thanking the many readers who sent me good wishes for recovery from the broken leg I sustained through being run over by an example of the native British and ubiquitous white van; I am pleased to report that I am making good progress.

Please send submissions for the next issue (September 2012) to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

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Kerrin P. Sharpe

Shaking hands with Vincent

    vincent feeds the golden mouth
    of his canvas

    he palm prints the wind
    here a drawbridge

    raises the mind
    of a small horse

    he paints a weathervane
    as the moon's elbow

    the hands of sowers
    their memories of seed

    a private collection
    of drying fish

    the potato eaters
    are sleep walkers

    their bullock cart
    a bible of mauve earth

    in the cornfield
    vincent's hands are crows

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Kerrin P. Sharpe

Reading the Church

    My mother the lay sister
    translates the voices of relics
    from a hammock of ribs
    high in the church.

    She wakes the accordion pleats
    of statues. She meets
    the creator of halos
    the milliner, laid out in stone.

    Here lambs the blood and bone
    of Limbo, only imagine
    the font. Here wing voices
    of guardian angels

    iron sheets of lead and glass
    from the life of Christ.
    Here the weft and warp threads
    of unanswered prayers

    knit the bones of the Holy Child
    and his tiny sanctuary slippers.
    Here my mother keeps
    the hours of the Virgin

    until the great cage
    of the Angelus
    settles around her.

Kerrin P. Sharpe is a teacher of creative writing. She has recently been published in Best NZ Poems 08, 09 and 10, and The Best of Best NZ Poems. Her first collection will be published soon.

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Pippa Little

Black Middens Bastle

    Crows flap the cold towards us
    coming in low on undertakers’ coat-tails.
    Snow smells of tin soured by mountain water
    and blood’s black glaze on a dropped-too-soon’s
    sodden tangle that never got warm,
    picked blue in the ditch to innocent bone
    by February’s end, forgotten.

    Years since we came to church.
    Sins and secrets, long-winded as the river
    on its stony course, do their disappear, dissolve
    in us,
    attend their own purpose.

    Black Middens is a sixteenth century fortified farmhouse on the Anglo-Scottish borders

Pippa Little is Scots, born in Tanzania, raised in Scotland and now lives in Northumberland. Recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, The Andrew Waterhouse Prize, The Biscuit International Poetry Prize and The Norman MacCaig Centenary Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, text journals and online. Her collections include Foray (Biscuit Press, 2009), The Snow Globe (Red Squirrel, 2011) and Overwinteringwhich is due from Oxford Poets/Carcanet in October 2012.

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Maria Taylor

My Uncle’s Creed

    I heard my uncle’s low-slung notes
    before I saw him, a feral litany of bass
    pulsing through the grey paving slabs
    of Kentish Town. Since he’d given up
    on a son and wedlock, it seemed that God
    had marked him for a book of psalms.

    His eyes scraped across his set face
    to look inside the mirror of my own ,
    but he’d refused to speak, since I married
    an englezo , so he passed, contriving to groan
    Jesus Christ, the saints and the Holy Spirit
    aided by a gargle of communion wine.

    He headed towards his wifeless maisonette,
    liturgies thrumming with the shoddiness
    of all mankind, each vowel pouring like lava
    with God slurred in a burning Kyrie Eleison.

Maria Taylor is a poet and reviewer of Cypriot origin. Her poetry has appeared in publications including, The North, Staple, The Guardian and others. Her debut collection Melanchrini is out with Nine Arches Press in July 2012.

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Tamar Yoseloff

Iron Urns

    A park, rus in urbe, a place to rest
    in peace, with roses, weeping willow:

    but we can’t contain the dead,
    they’re roused from sleep to sour the air,
    rusting every crack and crevice, a breath
    that smuts the back of necks; they’re reduced
    to ash, the lug of bone made light
    as laughter shivering the trees.

    We bear the weight of stones and slabs,
    heaving marble garlands, plaques proclaiming
    great works and deeds. They can’t release
    their grip, their names chiselled
    into benches where we sit. They thrust
    themselves upon us, insist we don’t forget.

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Tamar Yoseloff

Sacred to the memory

    Not even stone can hold us, words
    erased in poison air. We speak without words,
    with our eyes, our works, and etch
    our shapes in memory;  frail lace etched
    in the brain. In poison air we speak
    with angels, scrolls and glyphs. We speak
    in memory, its frail lace, honour
    what has turned to dust ; we honour
    stone. Even stone will turn to dust
    where all around us is erased, and dust
    remembers nothing,  no eyes, no shapes.
    We hold on to words: how we shaped
    our lives, our works (they vanish into air),
    how we etched memory in the air.

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Tamar Yoseloff

Whitechapel

    The trees imprison me, rigid wardens.
    I match them in my stillness, my stiff
    resolve. The marrow of the dead
    seeps into their roots, they carry omens
    in their leaves. I cannot leave

    as long as they are watching.
    They smuggle night inside their trunks
    and in daylight, crowd the glass with shadows.
    They reflect their frozen sky in me,
    my sightless eye, my hardened cheek.

    The bars caress my face, a grid of days.
    The world is square, like the map
    that shows us where we are: I am here.
    You are somewhere else.

Tamar Yoseloff’s fourth collection, The City with Horns, was published by Salt in 2011 (a London Grip review by Chris Beckett appears at https://londongrip.co.uk/2011/11/poery-review-winter-2011-yoseloff/). She has recently published the poem Desire Paths, a limited edition with woodcuts by Linda Karshan printed by the Galerie Hein Elferink (Netherlands). The poem above is from the pamphlet Formerly, with photographs by Vici MacDonald, to be published in June 2012 by Hercules Press.

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Fiona Moore

Limehouse

     Is it you following me, or I you –
          sensing rather than seeing,
    you who look so tall around each corner –
    and is our life slipping away
          a shadow on water?

          How can we find each other
    as we pass through these night streets, this gap-toothed square
          its portico risen from grime,
    down narrow-lit alleys, the same maze but changed
          that we never walked together?

          The house looms
    known in the dark, suspended over the river.
          Waves lap sunken piles.
    I open the door, but like a cupboard, it’s full
          of a long-gone winter –

    blankets, dry driftwood, coats.  I start pulling them out
          but are you still there,
          can we find our way?
    Drowning in wool, in the old sound of the river
          I wake, and wonder:

    is it you following me, or I you
    and is our life slipping away
          a shadow on water?

Fiona Moore lives in Greenwich, London, and has had poems in various magazines, last year including Poetry London and The Rialto. She has a blog at http://displacement-poetry.blogspot.com. She has a pamphlet forthcoming from HappenStance

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Alan Dunnett

On Reputation

    Scarred as the Martian cliffscape,
    blind as the Cyclops deceived,
    frail as a Chinese lantern,

    you graciously accept invitations
    and enter breath-held rooms
    with modest charisma.

    The rounds of delicate applause
    must have been for you but that summer
    has turned to winter.

    I take your cold hands in mine
    and look into your eyes
    and see what you can see.

    You speak again of supper
    with the Archduke and a party on the water
    and the odour of the gods.

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Alan Dunnett

Politics or The Way Of The World

    All arguments stop here, you imagine,
    although they have at last closed the border.
    No more crossings.  Their dogs will talk to us.

    Naturally, there will be some seepage.  Air
    is large.  How can they keep everyone in?
    By night, I work on the accounts.  One coin,

    then another.  I hear them fall like sleet
    with a consistency of stone.  Money
    brings happiness if only I balance

    the books.  We could get out tonight except
    they would then follow or even now, yes,
    be waiting for us... I promised but secrets

    unbind themselves at last.  Definition
    is a movable feast under each sun.

Alan Dunnett is the MA Screen Course Leader at Drama Centre London, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. His poem-film ‘Let In’ has recently been selected for several international festivals including Cyprus, Nuremburg and Kenya. Poems will soon be appearing in The Robin Hood Book and Other Poetry

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Brian Docherty

Refugee status

    The sky flashes pink/green/pink/grey
    through the larch trees lattice; occupying
    the plain below us, is a town my parents
    cannot name. Nana would if she could speak,;
    she knows the place, its local delicacies,
    the local dances, what rogues the traders are,
    which edge of the border jigsaw we fit on.
    Every day we have learned the same lesson
    about strokes, wheelchairs, and old women.
    My sister died in these woods two days ago.

    This town has a large square, a town hall,
    a campanile, no church that we can see.
    There will be banks, pawnbrokers, phones,
    fax, perhaps a bribeable clerk or official
    who will let us board a bus or train quietly.
    This morning Mama found our lost heirlooms
    in Nana’s soiled underclothes. Two weeks ago
    selling these things could have flown us out.
    Now we shall have to take our chances here.
    First we have to steer Nana down this slope.

    Uncle Paul would not have gotten this far;
    he sought sanctuary in the Hospice opposite
    the unmarked building where he was grilled
    by men in matching leather coats, beaten &
    broken, dumped in an alley, pissed on by dogs,
    left as crow meat for professing his faith in public.
    The ten-year-old robbers who took his shoes
    & wallet shouted this news up to our window.
    We packed one bag each before the Offical Visit.
    Now we will see how far our faith takes us.

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Brian Docherty

Arc

    Canadians can outtalk Texans on size;
    moose will win that argument every time,
    big hat no cattle gets you sent to Calgary.
    Flying to San Francisco from London
    seemed to happen mostly in Canadian
    airspace, hour after hour overflying
    the sort of Arctic waste the Mounties
    always got their man in; there really
    was no hiding place, or at least none
    unclaimed by wolves or hibernating bears.

    The pilot pointed out salient features
    as if we might need to remember these
    if the plane crashed and we survived.
    Places I had heard of materialised,
    arranged carelessly on either side of
    the 49th parallel’s ideological construct;
    Mt. Hozomeen, Desolation, Terror,
    proved suitably awesome & desolate
    but Jack Kerouac danced into my dream
    waving his wine jug shouting Go! Go!

    I had looked forward to seeing Denver,
    keen to match Dynasty’s credits to reality,
    as the plane cruised over the Rockies,
    but our world is a multi-dimensional book,
    & now, following the Earth’s curvature,
    I was flying west into a new morning,
    the arc over Iceland, Greenland, Canada
    shadows the Viking route to Vinland
    where everything seemed possible,
    and still does to travellers heading West.

Brian Docherty lives in north London and is a member of Word for Word Writers Group.
He has 3 books; Armchair Theatre (Hearing Eye, 1999), Desk with a View (Hearing Eye, 2008) and
Woke up this Morning (due from Smokestack Books, Oct 2012).

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Sally Long

King Raven

    Come on then.

    First, at dawn
    lambs’ hearts, liver, quails.
    Each day I tend them,
    warder, doctor,
    counsellor.

    Gwylum, Munin, Baldrick
    scurrying with clipped wings,
    Branwen, Gundulf.
    I watch over them
    my time shackled by theirs.

    All through the day
    there’s talk of severed heads
    and tales of those who fled the Tower
    but Hugine, Erin, Merlin
    you will never leave.

    Then at dusk,
    away from feral cat and fox,
    safe behind bars
    Thor steals my words
    and tosses them back.

    Come on then.

This poem uses actual names of ravens in the Tower of London. (Ravens are excellent mimics).

Sally Long is a teacher and postgraduate Creative Writing student at the universities of Newcastle and East London. Her poems have been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears and South.

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Amado Storni

Y yo tan solo What my loneliness is like

    Sincero como los niños y los borrachos,                                       As earnest as a child or drunkard,
    travieso como la musa de los artistas,                                         tantalising as an artist’s muse,
    inútil como la flor del coleccionista,                                             flat and sterile as pressed flowers,
    extraño como los besos en los despachos.                                  out of place as kisses in an office.

    Absurdo como las balas y las banderas,                                      Absurd as banners vindicating bullets,
    insulso como los labios hechos de mármol,                                 bland as parted lips in marble,
    herido como las hojas que caen del árbol,                                   blighted as the autumn’s cast-off leaves,
    errante como el aroma de Primavera.                                           elusive as the scents of spring.

    Distante como la voz de los dictadores,                                       Muffled as mouthed edicts from dictators,
    perdido como un “te quiero” en un telegrama,                            incongruous as love you in a telegram,
    confuso como la muerte frente al espejo.                                    confused as Death reflected in a mirror.

    Inquieto como un alérgico entre las flores,                                  Edgy as my allergies near flower beds,
    vacío como un diario sin crucigrama...                                         empty as my daily paper with no crossword ….
    Y yo siempre tan solo y tu siempre tan lejos.                               and desolate as I am always while you stay away.

     (English version by GW and MBB)

Amado Storni (a pseudonym in honour of the Argentinan poet Alfonsina Storni) was born in Madrid. He has published four poetry collections, most recently Post no Passes (Net Vision Publishing, 2008). For more information see http://amadostorni.blogspot.com/
GW is a professional translator living and working in New York; MBB edits London Grip new Poetry

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Emma Lee

Photo, Cotswolds circa 1935

    His wife has the most sunlight and the darkest look.
    One arm hidden could be fingering a dagger
    in the folds of her black dress.

    She's all angles, wiry hair pulled from her face.
    Her husband's lover fusses over a collie,
    shoulders and arms rounded, her features soft,
    her light tweeds better suited to country living,
    the bag on her lap big enough to cover her heart.

    The friend is the only one smiling, projecting
    the relaxed image of being in good company.
    The husband/photographer controls the view,
    choosing what he wants us to see.

Emma Lee’s collection Yellow Torchlight and the Blues was published by Original Plus. She blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com and regularly reviews for The Journal and Sphinx.

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Bruce Christianson

The Show Must Go On

    death stands in the wings
    the maiden, in the spotlight
    catches his eye and winks
    (offstage they were an item
    for a while but kept it quiet)

    this time when she collapses
    it's for real, her heart has stopped
    death steps forward, right on cue
    as the children scream delighted
    he's behind you

Bruce Christianson is from Whangarei, in New Zealand. After training as a mathematician he has spent twenty-five years teaching in Hertfordshire. Death knows where he is.

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David Cooke

Nevsky Prospekt

    Having survived the impoverished years
    with a patience that comes from impeccable
    breeding, Nevsky Prospekt makes its way
    like the grand narrative of history –

    from Moscow Station where we arrived,
    bleary eyed on the night-train and felt how air
    was chiller, to the state rooms of the Hermitage
    which later we duly admired.

    The slightly crumbling neo-classical
    facades were the pastel shades of icing, pale blues
    and greens, while the yellow, an ocean of paint
    picked up as a cheap job lot,

    is said to create the illusion of warmth
    in the depths of winter’s depression.
    There were amputees on the pavement,
    their stumps bound tightly in parcel tape,

    and bored touts like jesters
    in brightly coloured boiler-suits.
    Loud hailers that crackled all day long
    were promoting city tours

    and not proclaiming some new invasion.
    Beneath its theatrical drapes a shopping mall
    was being scrubbed for the future,
    the age of the oligarch and the business lunch.

David Cooke won a Gregory Award in 1977 and published Brueghel’s Dancers in 1984, but then stopped writing for twenty years. His retrospective collection, In the Distance, was published in 2011 by Night Publishing. A new collection, Work Horses, will appear in 2012 from Ward Wood Publishing.

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George Jardine

How To Make A Summer Radio With Discarded Objects

    take a butter box and an old fire grate
    some loops of rainbows to reel in the songs
    that are gathering  just over there
    listen to the secrets that stayed whispering
    never thinking they would be broadcast
    to all the listeners tuning in already
    blue and white gingham to cover the lid
    where the speakers are waiting to send out
    sounds and a couple of standards from the
    broken fence to secure the radio as the
    earth is still shaking and stretch number eight
    wire up past the clouds to receive the announcements
    that jostle in the air waves then lie back and listen
    to your own real radio ears smiling what skill

George/ Teoti Jardine, was born in Queenstown, of Maori, Irish and Scottish descent and has been writing poetry off and on most of his life. He has had poems published in Te Panui Runaka, the Burwood Hospital News Letter and the Christchurch Press Poetry section.

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F.M. Brown

Spring harvesting

    I usually don't mind this time of year
    But I ask you - call this spring?
    I’d tell you what I call it
    Only it's not fit for ladies
    They say we need the rain
    Well I bloody don't for one mate

    That's for sure
    When I'm out all weathers
    And sod all to show for it
    What with all them blooming flowers.
    You tell me what's gone to seed in April
    I'll tell you what

    Nothing

    Well nothing bar them bloody dandelion clocks
    I says to my missus, I says
    Them as is always going on about
    Living in the country
    Should try it for a while
    How would they manage

    Foraging for puff balls?
    That's what I'd like to know
    Too much damned puff and not enough balls
    That's what I say
    That always makes my missus laugh
    Well these days if you can't laugh
    What can you do?

    Nothing
    That's what

    Anyway so back we are
    With them itty-bitty seeds
    And a family to feed
    Well usually I just get on with it
    But when it comes to picking at wet fluff
    There I draw the line

    And another thing
    With the heads so full of water
    As soon as I get on the job
    The whole damn thing keels over
    And dumps me in the grass
    Apart from soaking me through something awful
    It makes me look ridiculous

    I've seen them peeping
    From behind their nets
    And laughing
    They think it's a great lark
    Well it's not, madam
    It's a bloody goldfinch
    Just trying to make a living.

F.M. Brown was born in Yorkshire but came south to Bedfordshire and subsequently began writing poetry – some of which has been published in Other Poetry, Interpreter’s House and London Grip

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Roy Marshall

Myths of London’s Parakeets

    1966

    Jimi Hendrix pushes up the sash;
    a breeding pair skims his halo of curls,
    screeches over Montagu square, settles
    in a plane tree.

    Jimi, who has just dropped a tab,
    smiles at their psychedelic escape.

                    ****

    1950

    In Shepperton for ‘The African Queen’,
    Humphrey Bogart, cigarette glued
    to his lip, is feeding ring-necks
    apple from a knife.

    Bogie calls to Lauren and they leave:
    The door is open to the sky behind them.

    	****

    1857

    John Samuels, a Hampstead lawyer,
    gifts two birds to his ailing daughter.
    She adores them for their rosy beaks,
    their emerald-green plumage.

    In a week he takes the cage to the heath,
    throws birds to the air, his tears streaming.

Roy Marshall is based in Leicester and has only recently begun to send work to magazines. He has had work accepted by The Rialto, Magma, Staple, Smiths Knoll, The Shop and elsewhere. His pamphlet Gopagilla will is published by Crystal Clear Creators in 2012.

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Andrew Shields

Waltz

    A tickle in the throat announces flu.
    Three days, too long to try to fight it off.
    Thirty days to pay off all the bills.
    Three hundred to be born, and more to die.
    The idle moments are the ones that count.

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Andrew Shields

Transplant

    A blackbird sings at high noon
    in the hospital park.
    She'll be going home soon
    with her brand-new heart.

    Someone died, and someone's saved
    for a few more years.
    The silent blackbird flies away
    from once and future tears.

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland, and teaches in the English Department at the University of Basel. His poems and translations have been published worldwide. His most recent book publication is A Matter of Wonder (Karger, 2011), a collection of science essays by Gottfried Schatz, translated from the German.

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Angela Kirby

Waiting for Muhommed

    How loud those small birds sing.
    The coffee’s cold, croissants
    and sugared rolls lie untouched
    on a white plate. From my balcony
    I watch cruisers, ferries, yachts,
    come and go between small fleets
    of fishing boats, hear you saying
    Oh, for Christ's sake, these things
    run their course, but you’re the past,
    way back in Barcelona, while Spain
    is just a long blue stain of hills
    across Bab el-Zakat.

                                      How quickly
    they’ve gone, these last six months,
    how smoothly, sailor, you’ve faded
    into the sea-mist. I take your
    lucky dollars from their chain, toss
    them down into the courtyard
    where they splash and glitter
    among euros, cents and dirhams
    in the fountain’s mosaic bowl.

    In just five minutes, Muhommed
    and his rusting cab will be here.
    He’ll bow, smile, fling open its boot,
    its battered door, ask And where to
    now, Madame? as if I really knew.

Angela Kirby was born in Lancashire and now lives in London. Her poems are widely published and have won a handful of prizes. She was the BBC’s Wildlife Poet of the Year in 1996 and 2001. Her two collections, Mr Irresistible and Dirty Work, are published by Shoestring Press.

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Anna Mioduchowska

Even When Light Failed

    Mirrors have a heart of stone.
    The harsh/tender eyes of the thirteen year old
    dig into every reflective surface lying in wait
    along a path strewn with enough obstacles
    to challenge a champion, and sure enough,
    they unearth nothing but doubt.
    Is my hair straight enough, my neckline
    low enough, my lips enough, my shoes, my bag?

    I steal into the panes Pamela leaves behind,
    search for traces of what she cannot perceive,
    even with her 20/20 vision.
    But mirrors are harder than stone.
    Meticulously treacherous, they wipe every face
    from memory as soon as it turns.

    Stone would take pity, safeguard the image,
    embellish, stand by in this world and the next.
    If Pamela’s frowns, secretive smiles were chiselled
    in granite, she could wander among them
    and even when light failed, touch the arch of her nose,
    curve of the lip, know herself to be daughter
    of the sun god, queen of all Egypt:

    a lion with a woman’s face one day, bearded
    conqueror the next.

    A girl feeding sunflowers
    to a hungry nuthatch, pink barrette in her hair
    in place of the sacred serpent, the cell phone
    her key of life.

Anna Mioduchowska’s poems, translations, stories, essays and book reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, on buses, and have been aired on the radio. An author of two poetry collections, In-Between Season, and Some Flowers Do Well in Flowerpots, she was born in Poland and lives in Edmonton, Canada

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Phil Kirby

Ammonite

    They trudge the shingle beach again,
    each giving step resounding down
    through depths of sea-smoothed stones,

    and push towards the farther end
    to search amongst a cliff’s collapse
    for traces of an ancient world.

    Their brightly-chequered travel rug
    asserts a garish square of now
    onto the gently curving strand,

    its muted palette of the past -
    all ferrous brown and creamy flint,
    or blue-grey lias, fossil-flecked –

    and there they sit, absorbed by waves,
    allowing time to pass until
    the daughter finds an ammonite,

    her little fingers following
    its corrugated swirling lines
    as if to draw the solid ghost

    of life that lived so long ago
    that putting numbers to the years
    is meaningless for her. She knows

    no more than here and now, but sees
    how much the fossil’s shape is like
    an ear, and holds it to her own.

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***

Phil Kirby

The Name

    ‘There’s nothing left,’ a local said.
    The platform’s gone, the station house
    converted to a private home –
    adventure playground for the kids,
    a bench beside the Evenlode.

    Across the tracks a nettled yard
    that’s full of disused vehicles,
    flat-tyred or burned-out, rusting through
    the quiet hours while nothing comes
    or goes but cars over the bridge

    which saunter up the hill towards
    a bigger town and never turn
    along the narrow road that leads
    to Adlestrop, its sloping lanes
    of honeyed walls and early blooms,

    its tiny multi-purpose shop
    closed-up for lunch, its silent church
    which gazes blankly over fields,
    these empty fields of Gloucestershire –
    all stilled, as in a daydream pause.

    Where buses loiter once a day
    a shelter - neatly kept, like new -
    displays the station’s cast iron sign
    as if announcing: where you stand
    is something more than just a name.

Originally from Chingford, Phil Kirby currently lives and works in Gloucestershire. He has run Waldean Press, been an East Midlands Arts ‘New Voice’ and bursary recipient, has had several pamphlets published and his first full collection,Watermarks from Arrowhead Press, came out in 2009. More at his website: www.waldeanpress.co.uk. He can also be followed on Twitter: @pkk31

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***

Robert Etty

On A Green Lane In The Afternoon

    The green lane alongside Pickering’s Wood
    in the patchy shadows of half-past four
    with grass stalks wagging slightly and sissing
    and Clump Hill Farm brown and grey on its rise
    is a place not to let the past dog your heels
    or be in two minds about being unsure
    but to feel the air at your unbuttoned neck
    and look at rose hips, and blue flies on leaves.

    I was walking there and it was September.
    Buzzards were circling ellipses of sky,
    swallows swerved in and out of spaces,
    slavering cows’ dewlaps wobbled and swung
    and September was as it usually was.
    Sunlight lit on the shape of a fox,
    gingerish at the foot of the hedge
    that was leading me round a bend in the lane.

    The fox didn’t see me or hear me or smell me,
    but stared as I closed in on where it sat
    across the field at something or anything.
    Then it stood slowly, yawned, showed me its rump
    and began to pick its steps through the grass.
    The grass was warm, the puddles crazed,
    sun and what breeze there was in our faces
    and neither of us saw reason to hurry,

    but the hawthorn hedge suddenly rattled
    and snapped and a wood pigeon clattered
    out of the foliage, shakily steadied
    and launched overhead in a clapping arc.
    As it flew across, the fox cowered and peered
    and its gaze fell from pigeon to me.
    Then the nettles it slipped into closed behind
    and gnats brought news of the following day.

Robert Etty was born in Lincolnshire, where he still lives. His poems have appeared in a range of magazines and his most recent collection is The Horncastle Executioner, published by Nunny Books of Grimsby.

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***

Chris Jackson

The Spider

On hearing Dusapin’s String Quartet No. 6 (‘Hapax’)

    I am, of course, a spider:
          my obstinacy, a viola;
    my gossamer back-and-forthing,
          woven ruminations
    of a violin. Watch me,
          busy always to continue
    a spider’s life. All things
          love the little kingdom
    they inherit. This is home,
          intricate with fetched
    fidget, this scratchy bow-flight
          is a busy cello urging
    me to tracery,
          all tossed about in
    winds of orchestra.
          And did you hear that bar
    when everything united,
           when an abseil’s pause
    swung, magnified
           by a coalescence in the score?
    It was as if the sun
           saw our swaying,
    and hurried to republish
          the mystery
    of me.

Chris Jackson lives in Hackney and works as a journalist. Over the last few years, his poems have appeared in many magazines and sites including Ambit, Equinox, The Interpreter’s House and Ink, Sweat & Tears. He reads regularly at London venues. An e-chapbook The Monkey Fragment is forthcoming from Silkworms Ink.

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***

Thomas Ovans

All of me

From words made famous by Gerald Marks & Seymour Simons

    Once I was all heart with eyes
    on you.  That left no part of me
    I'll never want to lose to you.
    Was I to go "My left arm’s all
    that I can part with"? No! So you can
    use me how you want to!  Take
    the part I’ll never use without you;
    part your wanton lips and cry
    "Go on! Go on! That was so good!"

    Eyes see; eyes want - that was why
    you took me on.  Arms use; arms lose;
    lips go "goodbye dear" - that was how
    you left me.  All your "I’m so good
    to you" was cant.  You never took
    my wants to heart.  You never took me
    to see Can-Can - not with all
    the good parts.  I was left with out-takes:
    I'll go with them to the can.

Thomas Ovans has worked for many years as a technical writer and editor. He has recently extended his output to include literary articles and reviews – not to mention poetry which has appeared in London Grip and Smiths Knoll

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#### 2 Comments

1. Wendy French
   31/05/2012 @ 12:53

   Excellent and thought provoking poems. I particularly enjoyed Waiting for Muhommed and Myths of London’s Parakeets. But all great poems Mike and thanks for your choices! How interesting to have so many bird poems in one edition.

   - Mike Bartholomew-Biggs
     01/06/2012 @ 09:42

     Thank you Wendy! I’ve found it very intriguing that in each of “my” issues of London Grip New Poetry so far a theme has emerged spontaneously from the diverse contributions by many different poets. I wonder if this can continue….